You’ve no doubt heard about artists, or their families, who’ve found a trove of lost recordings buried in the back of a closet in some nearly forgotten studio. Springsteen and Jennings come immediately to mind. Typically these are extra tunes that get cut from a record or demos that never really found a home and they just sort of accumulate over the years. But what if the lost tapes were a debut album? That’s just what happened to Virginia natives Stephen McCarthy and Kevin Pittman. After recording what was planned to be the first release of their band, The Sky Chiefs, life happened. The master tapes got lost for 30 years, then finally showed up in a friends’ attic last year. So after restoring and remastering the project, the duo is finally launching their debut, self-titled album, a mere three decades in the making.
Since they went their separate ways in the 90’s the pair formed their own various bands, including McCarthy co-founding The Long Ryders and being a sometime-member of The Jayhawks. So it’s not going to surprise you there are all the elements here of what became Americana. Take No Happiness For Sale as an example. It’s alt-country with some jangly guitar riffs. Knocking Out the Daylights is a little more rock centric, bordering on power pop. It’s commentary written 30-plus years ago about society’s shift away from morals and civility where “we’re all hat, ain’t got no cattle”. What Lonely Means layers vocal harmonies over a CCR-style beat and guitar. The individual parts are immediately recognizable, yet put together in a way not so familiar.
Leaning more in the twangy direction is Where I Wanna Be, occupying the center of a Venn diagram between indie, country, and bluegrass. It’s a life lesson about accepting, and then rejoicing in, what you have, especially the love that “I’d been working towards you all of my life.” The New Sara Jane sounds like what would have happened if The Beatles had gone country. Same thing with Engines, where you expect a sitar to break out at any moment. Walk All Over Me is a country kicker about a guy who can’t let go: a stalker in more of an irritating way than a creepy one. All Broke Down is old, old school country in the vein of Ernest Tubb or Eddy Arnold.
The one constant throughout the record is the two-part harmonies of McCarthy & Pittman. So many groups today have that vocal lock-step sound. I suppose the Everly Brothers first popularized it, or maybe Buddy Holly and his Crickets. It fell out of style for a couple of decades until the likes of The Jayhawks and Whiskeytown brought it back in the 90’s. Turns out The Sky Chiefs were also on that list, and now 30 years later you can hear it for yourself.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.